CA statewide candidates back high-speed rail project
A massive headache that awaits California’s next governor, and their successor in either 2031 or 2035, is seeing the state’s long promised and bedeviled high-speed rail project come to fruition. First proposed three decades ago, the initial segment to go into operation is now estimated to open in 2032 at the earliest.
Even then, it will be a shortened route providing service solely in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield. Extensions to Gilroy in the Bay Area and Palmdale north of Los Angeles have a target date of 2038, with costs estimated between $87 to $91 billion depending on if the Merced station is included or not.
Eventually, the system is supposed to run from San Francisco and Sacramento in Northern California all the way south to Anaheim near the Disneyland resort and San Diego. The Bay Area terminus has long been planned to be inside the Salesforce Transit Center, which will require burrowing a tunnel through San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood in order to get trains to the downtown transportation hub.
When he first took office in 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom scaled back funding for the project, which led to the focus being on the 171 miles currently under design and construction in the Central Valley. Earlier this year he heralded it generating 16,400 well paid jobs, 70% of which went to local residents.
https://www.ebar.com/story/166104/News/Politics/Political%20Notes%3A%20CA%20statewide%20candidates%20back%20high-speed%20rail%20project
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